cubinator

It "hops" to orbit. That's more than I can say of any rocket I've built. And they could very well put something more useful than a cheese wheel in the nose of that thing if they wanted to. They are just skipping the payload because they prefer to test to destruction several times as quickly as possible in order to improve the already partially-functional design.

Yup, hot thrusters are out, on the booster at least. It's just strategic venting. And, on Tim's suggestion, Elon said they might try that on the ship too.

Elon said that they are gonna tilt up the booster just before shutdown and use the angular momentum to separate the Starship and start the boostback, much like the Starlinks. The booster will use the normal venting of the gas inside the main tanks as RCS. It's about 6 bar and would work about as well as dedicated thrusters. Dragon thrusters are about 8-9 bar.

pinging is cheating. spacescifi

You should definitely have a computer

696 stacks like this one.

It's stacked! Welcome, world's most powerful rocket!

You mean RIGHT when I get to work?!

If I recall from astrophysics class, the asteroid is typically about 1/10 as wide as the crater it makes. So a 420 km crater would be made by a 42 km asteroid, or perhaps a bit smaller one that was travelling unusually fast. From there you can take the density of common asteroid materials and the typical velocity around 30 km/s to figure out the kinetic energy.

And should add BO's lunar lander, just for kicks.

Near future, you say? Such as... ...vehicles which are currently in development? ...which have perhaps done static engine tests, fitted components, etc...? ...but have NOT yet performed flight tests such as hops or high altitude maneuvering tests? ...and which have NOT yet been fully assembled in an operational setting?

I'm pretty sure Elon-time still says August. So, maybe October lol.

Booster is rising!

remembers Gemini paraglider

ah yes, SLS

That's nuts. I love it and I hope it works.

I think it will be slightly different. Clearly the area around KSC is different, it looks more swampy like Cape Canaveral.

If you scaled one light year to the size of a meter stick, the distance from the Sun to Neptune would be about half a millimeter.

Woohoo! Now that's a Mars rocket!

The game cannot be finished.

Of course, the major air pollution comes from the big shipping boats. For those it's more difficult to pack enough energy in a battery at low enough mass. It would be really nice if these could be made electric someday.

Hmm...electric boat. I'm sure there are a few around. I bet a boat motor doesn't have to be any bigger than a car motor, so if you made a big enough boat with the car battery pack I bet it would float and run.

Nauka would lose angular speed as it leaves, and Zvezda would move up to hit it.

I suppose they could try that. If they did it while the station was spinning, though, Nauka would hit Zvezda...

Would the ISS have had enough fuel to counter the rotation if Nauka had had more fuel in it and taken longer to be stopped? Neither Soyuz nor Dragon are in a great spot should evacuation have been necessary. The station was spinning such that Soyuz would easily hit Nauka if it were detached. If the station were to run out of fuel, no spacecraft could be docked to it until stability was restored. Radiation pressure and atmospheric drag could do it, but how long would it take?